Chapter 248: Day of Gratitude
Tamara slowly withdrew her hand, her fingertips brushing the crisp white hospital linen as Harry settled back against his pillows. Her dark eyes slid sideways, locking onto the frosted glass bottle of pumpkin juice resting on the bedside table. Condensation beaded along its neck in the cool air of the Hospital Wing.
She had painstakingly diluted the Soul Separation Potion to a near-undetectable trace, yet the memory of Dumbledore's piercing, half-moon-spectacled gaze just moments prior still clawed at her spine. The old fool's eyes had lingered far too long.
'Not now,'she decided, her mind whirring with cold calculation.'The timing is compromised.'
With a subtle flick of her wrist, she angled her sleeve, preparing to vanish the tainted bottle back into the folds of her robes and wait for a less scrutinized moment.
Her pale fingertips had barely grazed the chilled glass when a sudden blur of motion interrupted her.
"Pumpkin juice? Did Madam Pomfrey leave this for me? Brilliant, my throat is absolutely parched."
A hand shot out from the bed linens, calloused fingers wrapping around the bottle and snatching it right out from under her nose. Tamara blinked. She had to begrudgingly admit—as Gryffindor's star Seeker, Harry Potter possessed reflexes that were downright freakish.
Pop. The cork was out before she could even draw a breath.
Tamara's pupils shrank to pinpricks. Her hand darted forward on pure instinct, desperate to intercept the poison.
But to the Boy Who Lived, Tamara Riddle was currently an angelic savior, his closest confidante, a beacon of pure virtue. Why would he harbor even a shadow of suspicion? Seeing her hand reach out, the idiot actually smiled, assuming she was just offering to hold the bottle for him.
Instead of handing it over, Harry tilted his head back and chugged. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed more than half the bottle of pumpkin juice—heavily laced with her carefully brewed Soul Separation Potion—in three massive gulps.
Tamara's outstretched hand froze in mid-air. Her brain momentarily short-circuited.
She had spent hours plotting this. She had run through over a dozen complex, psychologically manipulative scenarios in her head, agonizing over how to naturally coax him into drinking the laced juice without triggering his Gryffindor paranoia.
And yet, this monumental, brain-dead imbecile had just willingly chugged her dark magic concoction like it was tap water?!
"The taste is a bit... astringent, isn't it?" Harry lowered the half-empty bottle, smacking his lips with a slight frown. He peered at the orange liquid. "Do you reckon Madam Pomfrey mixed a potion into it?"
'Obviously, you absolute troglodyte.'
Tamara smoothly retracted her frozen hand. Not a single muscle in her face twitched as she smoothly adopted a mask of gentle concern.
"Obviously," she murmured, her voice soft and reassuring. "You just plummeted from a terrifying height, Harry. She had to administer a strong sedative to stabilize your nerves."
Harry nodded slowly, completely swallowing the lie.
In truth, Madam Pomfrey had nothing to do with it. The concoction, brewed by the hands of the greatest Dark Lord in history, was already weaving its insidious magic through his bloodstream. Despite the heavy dilution, the dark alchemical properties were brutally efficient.
Almost immediately, a heavy fog rolled over Harry's eyes. He blinked sluggishly, his head swaying. Then, his hand twitched. The jagged, lightning-bolt scar on his forehead flared an angry red.
"Hiss... my scar..." Harry groaned, his fingers lifting weakly to massage the burning flesh.
Since the die was cast, Tamara leaned into the role.
"Don't touch it," she instructed softly, her tone laced with faux-worry. While his vision blurred, she swiftly palmed the half-empty bottle from the bedside table, vanishing it into her robes.
Her pitch-black eyes locked onto that infamous scar. A venomous, hungry greed swirled in the depths of her gaze, completely at odds with the angelic sweetness of her voice. "It is merely a side effect of the sedative reacting with your magical exhaustion. Don't worry, Potter. You just need to sleep. You will be perfectly fine when you wake."
Harry let out a long, shuddering breath, deeply comforted by her presence. Between the lingering shock of his fall and the rapid onset of the potion, his consciousness was crumbling. He obediently let his hand drop to his side.
"I understand," he slurred, his eyelids fluttering shut. "Thank you... Tamara."
Tamara stood over him in silence, waiting until his breathing evened out into the heavy, rhythmic cadence of a magically induced coma. Once she was certain the potion had taken root, she turned on her heel and glided out of the Hospital Wing.
The moment the heavy oak doors clicked shut behind her, she was assaulted by a wall of noise.
A massive throng of Quidditch players, previously barred by the professors, had been loitering in the corridor, vibrating with pent-up energy.
"Riddle!"
Before Tamara could even brace herself against the blinding sea of scarlet and gold, Gryffindor's Quidditch Captain, Oliver Wood, lunged at her like a rampaging Mountain Troll. Tamara's reflexes flared; she took a sharp half-step back just in time to avoid Wood grabbing her hand and violently pumping it out of its socket.
"Thank you so much! You've practically saved the entire Gryffindor team!" Wood bellowed, his face flushed with manic gratitude. "If it weren't for your incredible reaction speed, we would have lost Hogwarts' best Seeker!"
"You saved his life, Riddle! Gryffindor owes you a massive favor!" another player shouted from the back.
The rest of the lions chimed in, creating a deafening chorus of praise. They stared at her, a Slytherin, with sickeningly warm, teary-eyed expressions of inter-house unity.
Tamara's jaw tightened. Surrounded by these Gryffindors, who were currently as loud and obnoxious as a colony of marmots in heat, a wave of visceral, murderous irritation clawed at her throat. 'I should curse the lot of you into silence,' she thought venomously, maintaining a stiff, polite posture.
Fortunately, the corridor wasn't entirely infested with lions. A smattering of blue and bronze stood among the red.
"Tamara."
A gentle, melodic voice cut through the clamor.
"I hope calling you by your first name doesn't offend you."
Cho Chang, the Ravenclaw Seeker, stepped gracefully out of the chaotic mob. Unlike the hyperactive Gryffindors, the Ravenclaw girl maintained her composure. She met Tamara's eyes with a serious, dignified expression.
"Though it might sound strange coming from an opponent... thank you for saving Harry," Cho said softly. "If the match had been decided by such a tragedy today, it would never have been a fair and square victory for Ravenclaw. You preserved the integrity of the game."
Tamara internally scoffed at the naive obsession with fair play, but Cho's quiet dignity was infinitely more tolerable than Wood's sweaty shouting. More, someone was finally acknowledging the broader implications of her actions rather than just harping on the nauseating concept of saving Potter.
She offered Cho a brief, aristocratic nod, preparing to carve a path through the crowd and escape to the dungeons.
Just as she stepped forward, a dreamy, weightless voice drifted through the air.
"So you're here, Tamara."
Luna Lovegood materialized from the periphery, her dirty-blonde hair swaying as she floated into Tamara's path like a ghost.
"I wanted to thank you, too," Luna said, her unblinking, protuberant eyes staring right through Tamara. "I haven't lost my shoes even once since you helped me last time."
Before Tamara could brush her off, Luna continued, her tone airy and conversational. "Daddy always says that when you accept someone's kindness, you must exchange it for a secret of equal value. So, as a thank-you gift, I want to share a very interesting phenomenon I've discovered in the castle recently..."
A collective cringe rippled through the surrounding Ravenclaw students. Several older eagles exchanged panicked glances, and one boy even half-reached out to yank the eccentric girl back, terrified she was about to provoke the notoriously dangerous Slytherin.
Luna remained entirely oblivious to the suffocating awkwardness. She simply tilted her head, gazing at Tamara.
"The Wrackspurts in the castle have been terribly restless lately," Luna whispered confidentially. "They're all huddling in the dark corners, buzzing around a very special rat."
Tamara's eyes narrowed imperceptibly.
"I've never seen a rat with so many heavy Wrackspurts swirling around its head," Luna continued, her voice tinged with genuine pity. "It must be very sad. Its mind is completely filled with confusion and very bad thoughts. If you're interested, Tamara, I could take you to see it sometime..."
The nearby Ravenclaws looked ready to spontaneously combust from secondhand embarrassment. Cho Chang coughed delicately, stepping forward to run interference. "I'm so sorry, Riddle. Luna just... she has a unique way of seeing things—"
"A rat?"
Tamara's voice sliced through Cho's apology like a silver blade. She completely ignored the flustered eagles, her pitch-black eyes locking onto Luna with sudden, terrifying intensity.
Her mind raced. If this seemingly deranged girl possessed some latent form of magical sight...
Combining this bizarre claim with the passing complaints Draco had made recently about the sudden influx of rats in the castle, the puzzle pieces violently snapped together in Tamara's brilliant, twisted mind.
What kind of ordinary rat could possibly emit mental fluctuations strong enough to manifest as a visible aura to a Seer?
'Only one,'she realized, her pulse thrumming with dark excitement.'Peter Pettigrew.'
The cowardly Animagus.
And suddenly, the greatest mystery of the past month unraveled. Why had the Basilisk—the apex predator she had explicitly ordered to hunt down the castle's rats—consistently returned empty-handed?
If that miserable, treacherous rat was currently harboring the soul fragment of the twenty-year-old Voldemort... it all made perfect sense. The diary phantom possessed all of her memories, her magic, and her innate gifts. He could use Parseltongue. He could easily evade, manipulate, or even outright command the cold-blooded creatures sent to hunt him!
'No wonder the Basilisk couldn't find a damn thing!'
A rush of intoxicating euphoria flooded Tamara's veins. The board was set, and she was back in absolute control.
Then, under the bewildered and borderline horrified gazes of the gathered students, the famously icy, untouchable Slytherin did the unthinkable.
She smiled at Luna Lovegood. And it wasn't her usual mocking smirk; it was a genuine, terrifyingly bright smile of pure predatory approval.
"Your eyes are incredibly keen, Lovegood," Tamara purred, leaning in slightly. Her voice was smooth as velvet. "They are vastly more useful than those belonging to... the vast majority of self-righteous fools occupying this castle."
Luna beamed, her silvery-grey eyes lighting up as if she had just been handed the most wonderful gift. Encouraged by the unmatched praise, she eagerly pressed forward.
"Then would you like to go catch Freshwater Plimpies with me later?" Luna asked brightly. "Or perhaps we could look for Nargles in the pumpkin patch? It's their breeding season right now, so they're ever so easy to spot."
The warm, appreciative smile on Tamara's face shattered like cheap glass.
'Go dig in the mud for imaginary bugs and fish?' The very thought made her skin crawl. How could she, the greatest Dark Lord of the age, stoop to something so utterly beneath her dignity?
A muscle in Tamara's jaw twitched. She instantly wiped the smile from her face, straightening her spine and retreating behind her impenetrable mask of aristocratic frost.
"No," Tamara replied, her tone instantly dropping ten degrees into a dry, perfunctory dismissal. "Perhaps... if there is time in the future. We shall see."
Anyone with a shred of social awareness would have heard the glacial rejection dripping from those words.
But Luna Lovegood was immune to social cues. Instead of shrinking back, she looked as though Tamara had just sworn a solemn, unbreakable vow. A serene smile of absolute relief graced her face.
"That's really wonderful," Luna chirped. Completely ignoring the collective gasp of the surrounding students—who looked ready to dig their own graves and lie in them—Luna happily extended her hand toward the Slytherin. "Nargles like people with keen eyes like yours best. When you have time, you simply must let me know."
Tamara slowly lowered her gaze, staring at the small, pale hand hovering in the space between them.
The seconds ticked by in agonizing silence. The hand remained stubbornly suspended in mid-air, utterly unbothered by the suffocating tension. Behind it, Luna watched her with wide, unblinking sincerity.
Tamara released a long, suffering sigh in the dark confines of her mind. She had absolutely zero doubt that if she refused, this deranged Ravenclaw—whose head was evidently stuffed to the brim with her own imaginary Wrackspurts—would stand there with her arm raised until the Christmas holidays.
And so, under the incredulous, bulging eyes of half the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Quidditch teams...
The great Dark Lord reluctantly lifted her arm. She grasped Luna's hand, delivering a single, stiff, painfully polite shake before snatching her fingers back as if she had been burned.
"...Fine," Tamara ground out through clenched teeth.
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